Mass Effect 3 interview: Shepard’s story will end, the world will continue

We spoke with Mass Effect 3's producer about how to properly end a triple-A …

I'm in the process of trying to interview Jesse Houston, the producer of Mass Effect 3, and there are too many people around us for me to feel comfortable with my audio recording. I keep inching closer, until my recorder is right under his nose, and we both pretend this is a normal way to have a conversation. I don't care: we're going to talk about Mass Effect 3, which will finish one of my favorite story arcs in all of gaming.

We talked about the action elements of the series and the end of all the different threads moving through the series, and his answers made me very excited for the arrival of the final game.

I had just seen a demo of the game, with Shepard running from cover to cover, shooting at the enemies and attacking from close range with the new Omniblade, an energy weapon on his wrist. If I didn't know any better, I would say I'm watching a war game. Houston nods, but he claims that those distinctions don't matter anymore.

"Games like Battlefield and Call of Duty are bringing more RPG elements into their games. We've been historically a big RPG company, and in the past 15 years we've moved more action elements into our games," he said. "It's not about making an RPG or using 15 year-old distinctions, it's really about what are the tools and what are the levers that we need to pull to tell a good story."

The game isn't just about fighting, though: the social aspects of the game and the story are still there in force, and now you'll be able to find workbenches to modify and upgrade your weapons and armor. "From Mass 1 to Mass 2 there were huge changes, such as the removal of inventory, and the battle was polished, but we feel that maybe that pendulum swung too far the other way, and not far enough in others," Houston said. "From a combat perspective, it was about turning a very static combat into more of a cover-based shooter, and now it's about adding more control and more fluidity, and way better AI. Our enemies have much better control of the battlefield this time."

The problem was that the first game had a clunky inventory system, and in the second game the developers focused on keeping you in the action by simply removing it. Now you have the option of working on your equipment, but if you choose to skip it, you can still play and excel at the game. "It's deep, it's going to be very fluid, and we'll get you in and out of that screen quickly," Houston said. Hopefully, we'll see the best of both worlds.

The story will come to a final, definite end

The game is much more than the overt story with Commander Shepard and the Reapers. There are many story threads running through the game. Will the Genophage ever come to an end? Will we ever see the Rachni again? I asked Houston how many of those lower-level stories will be resolved. "A lot," he said, laughing, "A lot." He explained that all the stories were built knowing they would be resolved in the final game. The plotlines will be resolved, and things will come to a definite end. Even what Houston referred to as "C-level" plots will come back and be closed.

"Not only are we tying up loose ends, but we're bringing loads of characters back... a lot of characters back. As a game dev, it's a nightmare," he said. "We hope the users love it, because we put a lot of effort into making sure everything is tied up."

He stressed that this won't be the end of the Mass Effect world, just the end of the trilogy. I brought up my dissatisfaction with the end of the Halo story, with Master Chief floating in space. Are people going to be frustrated by the end of the game?

Houston shakes his head. "No, no, no, no. We are absolutely committed to ending Commander Shepard's story at the end of this. I am not going to go into any detail beyond that, but really we want players to feel like the investment they made over the past seven years or whatever it's been, it would have been a rewarding experience for them," he explained.

He said people should want more because they love the world of Mass Effect, not because there are any gaping plot holes or "lanterns left burning." He put it simply: "We want to tie up all the loose ends, put the trilogy to bed, and leave people with the feeling of satisfaction, like reading a really good book."